Recruits
by donahermurphy
Summary: A dark look at the Stargate Program's methods of recruitment.


Summary: A dark look at the Stargate Program's methods of recruitment.

* * *

The intake interviewer (a psychologist, but not introduced as such) reads her file, assumes she doesn't understand people very well, and subsequently focuses heavily on emphasizing the importance of teamwork at Stargate Command. He speaks in a gentle voice, giving her careful smiles. He mentions forming some kind of outline for her career path within the SGC.

Alice Cummings fingers her glasses in her lap, and thinks about the information missing from her briefing, letting his words wash over her until the interviewer asks if she has any questions or comments.

(It isn't that people aren't interesting, and she doesn't think she finds them any less understandable than anyone else does. But Alice thinks it preferable not to focus on unpleasant things, and she isn't as good at ignoring the common cruelties of daily interaction as everyone else seems to be. )

Alice is well-socialized enough not to say this, and she politely ignores his patronization in favor of asking for a tour of the labs.

* * *

Alice Cummings was thirty-nine when she received the request for interview by the Pentagon.

The heavy paper and the expensive letterhead (and later, the Air Force officers) had not convinced her that she'd been selected due to any special qualities. Her work was good, she knew that. Her latest research paper had been solid and thorough and the final analysis she'd proposed had drawn together several sets of disparate and seemingly irreconcilable data into a tight, sound conclusion.

Her ideas were good, and well-reasoned, and more than a little brilliant. And not popular in the least. She knew, standing before her parents' tombstone with flowers in hand, that the officials at the Pentagon had decided to interview Alice not because of anything she possessed, but rather, because of what she was missing. (Someone to miss, or to miss her.)

She knew, and she took the job.

This is what Alice remembers when the SGC offers her a form for colleague recommendations, fellows she might want to bring into the warm and nurturing environment of the SGC, where opportunities for exploration and scientific advancement abound.

She leaves it blank.

* * *

Alice trains for twelve months before taking the offworld post at Icarus Base. (She is surprised, in retrospect, that Stargate Command bothered to spend that long on her acclimation, on encouraging her to learn Ancient and Goa'uld and the importance of spare control crystals. Less and less people get such thorough training as the months wear on.)

On Icarus base, she works on the problem of the ninth chevron for three months, focusing almost solely on the maintenance of safe power levels in the planet's core once she realizes that Dr. Rush would really rather not receive any help in calibrating the systems.

Alice is not sure she would have wanted to give that aid even if he'd been willing to accept. She's not terribly concerned about power levels, or her personal security- she accepted the job, she knew what she was getting into- but safety maintenance is important, for all that it's not a very glamorous. And Dr. Rush can't do it.

(Can't, not won't. She doesn't really think he's capable of taking focus off the goal of the ninth chevron at this point, not for something as incidental as public safety. This is not a failing as a person, or as a scientist. Dr. Rush is an excellent scientist, but a very poor project manager, and she wishes someone here besides her would understand that- instead of maligning his character or letting him have free reign over the base, the two options everyone else seems to prefer.)

Alice doesn't continue PT once on Icarus base, not beyond the mandatory sessions civilians are required to attend, so she does not become particularly well acquainted with the members of the military stationed here. They're generally only on base a short while before being transferred back to the SGC or another offword location, anyway. All young, and more and more have experience on previous off-world stations on other planets that lasted weeks and months.

A generation of planetary migrants.

(Alice is intelligent, but there are people associated with the Stargate Program who are much, much smarter than she is. Alice knows this not because she's met any of them, but because she keeps stumbling into the detritus of their plans, moves in a multi-layered chess game that she can barely recognize the significance of and no hope of placing in context.)

Some people receive videos from home or friends –or send videos to earth themselves- and others write letters. Most do so infrequently; Alice does it not at all.

She is not surprised when Eli Wallace, MIT drop-out, is brought to Icarus Base. She almost laughs when she hears about the online puzzle- it is a clever idea, a different way of choosing a person who no one will miss. (She wonders how more will follow him, if the experiment is successful; if it matters at all whether this video game child swims or drowns.)

Dr. Rush claims to have designed the game, but she knows he did not come up with the idea for it. (And had anyone stated there is only one game? Alice wonders how many there are, and whether Wallace is really the first. How long has Stargate Command been this desperate for recruits, this sloppy in concealing motive? )

Rush is too focused on the ninth chevron too see the signs, but there is something much, much bigger coming.

She wants to see it, but never gets the chance.

* * *

There are twelve confirmed causalities after Icarus Bases is attacked, Sam Carter reports.

The last one to be identified is a scientist named Alice Cummings, an engineer who worked with the safety systems. Her name is added to the end of a very long list.

Stargate Command quietly looks for a replacement.

(Someone who won't be missed.)


End file.
